Role and Position of the State Council of China

Role and Position of the State Council of China

Introduction

According to the Constitution, the State Council is “the Central People’s Government”. It has been described as the executive body of the highest organ of state power (i.e. of the National Peope’s Congress). It is the “supreme organ of state administration”. 

Role and Position of the State Council

The State Council occupies a position of great importance in the governmental system of China. It is the Government of People’s Republic of China and remains responsible and accountable to the National People’s Congress and, when the latter is not in session, to the Standing Committee of the NPC. Its importance lies, first, in the fact that it is the apex of administrative control over the country’s economic resources. 

Secondly, it is the centre from which the country’s economy is planned. It directs the national economy and heads the whole system of management in industry, construction and agriculture. The range of its powers is so vast that it administers and guides the country’s socialist reconstruction. Its competence extends to every sphere of the nation’s social and political life. This explains why the State Council is easily integrated with the leadership of the Communist Party. According to Western critics, however, the importance of the State Council in the governmental system of China is nominal. In the first place, the State Council composed of 45 to 53 members is too large a body for effective decision making. Consequently, an inner cabinet consisting of the Premier and Vice Premiers and State Councillors make important policy-making decisions. This criticism can also be made against British Government in which the effective decision-making is made by the Cabinet and not by the full Council of Ministers. The position of Indian Council of Ministers is the same. Secondly, since the nation’s basic policies are laid down by the Communist Party, the State Council’s role in decision-making is purely formal. The State Council is an instrument in implementing the policies and directions of the Party. 

The position is same in other countries. In Britain as well as in India, the Cabinet is composed of leaders of the majority party in the Parliament and the Cabinet implements the policy of the party. Thirdly, since the State Council remains responsible to the Standing Committee, when the NPC is not in session, the Standing Committee is more powerful than the State Council. But this view is not warranted by facts. 

First, the Premier of the State Council is the head of the Chinese Government, roughly in the sense in which the British Prime Minister heads the Government of Great Britain or the Indian Premier heads the Indian Government. 

Secondly, the Premier and Vice-Premiers and several other ministers holding important portfolios belong to the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Till 1975 Zhou Enlai, whose position in the. party was second to Mao Zedong, was the premier of China. After the death of Mao and till 1980, the Chairman of the Communist Party Hua Guofeng was the Premier; the first Vice-Chairman of the Party, Deng Xiao- ping, was the Vice-Premier, and other Vice-Premiers were also top ranking party leaders. Today also, the State Council is composed of most of the front-line leaders of the party. 

Fourthly, the State Council’s responsibility to the Standing Committee is formal. The latter can never remove the former. The Standing Committee can remove an individual minister only on the advice of the Prime Minister. 

Finally, the role of the State Council in preparing and drafting almost all legislations laid before the National People’s Congress refutes the idea of subordination of the State Council to the Standing committee.

Hence it would not be unreasonable to conclude that the State Council is the government of the People’s Republic of China. To quote B. Womack and James R. Townshend, “As translatory of party decisions into state decrees, with administrative control over government action at all levels, it is the true center of state power.”

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